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Uh, does it? I thought the only way it could have looked more feminine is if the Is were dotted with little hearts and the whole thing was in a Hello Kitty diary.
Most of it looks like chicken scratches. Would 100% earn “you’ll be a doctor someday” jokes. I’ve met very few women with handwriting that shit. For a guy it’s not the worst in the world, my hand writing is way worse, I’d say it’s just a bit below average for boy handwriting.
Or am I out of touch and all teenagers have garbage handwriting now?
Just an anecdotal aside, but my mom's handwriting has always been pretty terrible (and now that she's in her 60s, it's approaching illegibility).
That's been my, admittedly limited, experience. For that matter, I think it was when I reached 5th grade (1992-1993) that they stopped teaching us handwriting in school and had us start submitting all reports (and generally anything not a "fill-in-the-blank" worksheet) as typed up on computer and printed out. With modern electronic communications, do they even do the "print out a physical copy on paper" step anymore?
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Well most teenagers barely write anything anymore outside of sometimes at school, they type it.
Something about the clearly formed loops in letters looks very feminine to me. It's not the ultra neat penmanship you'd expect of a grade A student, but that's not who this was, this was a deeply mentally unwell girl who thought she was a boy. As far as tomboy writings go, it matches up well. The handwriting is inconsistent in places, I assume, because she was undergoing a continuous mental breakdown.
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It all looks extremely legible and vaguely feminine to me. Perhaps my standards are far too low (re. legibility).
Agreed. It's nowhere near typical "good girl" handwriting (the valedictorian in my high school had handwriting that looked not just like a font, but like a cursive typewriter) but it's very legible and has some obviously feminine features (like the heart).
Also, it's not a manifesto, it's a diary or journal (or two), which strikes me as more feminine (this is obviously culturally mediated, diaries weren't always female coded, but they are now)
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Look at the note where she's calling her targets faggots. The handwriting is all over the place. The letter formation isn't consistent from one word to the next, let alone inside words that have multiple of the same letter. The letters that stick up or go below the line are often smushed to the point of looking like a completely different letter.
It's legible enough to understand if you slow down a bit. You can still tell what's being said due to context. But in no way would I call it neat, especially for a girl. Girl handwriting can get almost font like. As I said, my handwriting is way worse, but I have appalling handwriting even for a guy. My handwriting is often not legible to anyone but myself unless I slow down to an impractical pace.
I only glanced at it, and I assume these entries, like many diary entries, weren't meant with a future audience in mind necessarily, but for the writer to essentially vomit thoughts onto the page. I've read many, many handwritten pages throughout my teaching career and I'd have thought girl looking at these. Not girlie girl, but female.
That doesn't mean I'm right and you're wrong, it's just what I thought and still think. You have a point that some sections are far less legible.
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